Technical Field
The present invention relates to an active energy ray curable composition, an active energy ray curable ink, a composition stored container, a two dimensional or three dimensional image forming apparatus, an image forming method, a cured material, and a processed product
Background Art
Photopolymerizable inks are conventionally used or supplied for offset, silk screen, top coating agents, etc. and become popular due to its cost reduction by simplifying drying processes and advantages such as less volatile amounts of solvents, which is good for protection of the environment.
Of these, aqueous-based and solvent-based inkjet inks are most commonly and selectively used to particular applications. However, aqueous-based and solvent-based inkjet inks involve drawbacks such that the variety of substrates (materials to which ink is applied, recording medium, etc.) for industrial use is limited, such inks have relatively poor water resistance and large drying energy, and the ink components are attached to a head as they dry. Therefore, replacement of the aqueous-based and solvent-based inkjet inks with photopolymerizable inks having relatively low volatility is researched and studied.
With regard to the photopolymerizable inkjet ink, after the photopolymerizable inkjet ink is applied to a substrate, post-processing to the recorded matter is increasingly required.
Cured materials of typical photopolymerizable inkjet inks are hard but brittle in most cases. Therefore, mono-functional monomers are added to the ink to secure extensibility required for such processing. However, simply adding such monomers is not sufficient to obtain a cured material having a desired hardness. In addition, if a polymerizable multi-functional monomer is used to maintain hardness of a cured material, extensibility deteriorates. That is, there is trade-off between hardness and extensibility.
In addition, in attempts to obtain a hard cured material, a mercury light or an irradiator to emit a low energy ray such as an ultraviolet laser beam as a device is used to cure a photopolymerizable inkjet ink. However, these are also not sufficient to improve hardness.